Paulie Gualtieri

Peter Paul "Paulie Walnuts" Gualtieri (1942-) was underboss of the DiMeo crime family under Tony Soprano. Gualtieri was one of Soprano's most trusted lieutenants, and he rose to become a caporegime and an underboss during Soprano's tenure as boss of the DiMeo family.

Biography
Peter Paul Gualtieri was born in Newark, New Jersey in 1942 to a family of Italian descent, the illegitimate son of a World War II soldier; he was raised by Gennaro Gualtieri. Gualtieri's grandfather came to the United States in 1910, emigrating from Ariano Irpino in the Campania region of southern Italy. He was a troubled street kid from the age of nine, and he dropped out of school after his freshman year of high school and spent time in and out of juvenile correctional facilities during his youth. When he was seventeen, he became an enforcer and bodyguard for Johnny Soprano, and he spent time in and out of prison on various charges, even serving in the US Army's Signal Corps for four years before being discharged for psychiatric reasons. In the early 1990s, he was nicknamed "Paulie Walnuts" for hijacking a truck containing walnuts, mistakenly believing that it was carrying television sets. Gualtieri became a made man in the DiMeo crime family, and he adhered to old Mafia customs. He devoted his entire life to being a gangster, remaining single and having no children.

Gualtieri became known as a key member of Tony Soprano's crew, and he was sent to execute a Colombian drug dealer and steal his drugs. During Soprano's brief and bloody war with Junior Soprano in 1999, Gualtieri and Christopher Moltisanti executed Mikey Palmice in a forest. When Tony Soprano became the street boss of the family, Gualtieri took over his old crew as capo. In 2000, Gualtieri, Soprano, and Silvio Dante were forced to execute their old friend Salvatore Bonpensiero for being an FBI informant. Gualtieri and Christopher Moltisanti would later become rivals due to Moltisanti's irregular payments to Gualtieri, Gualtieri's sniffing of the panties of Moltisanti's fiancee, and their inability to kill a Russian mobster in the Pine Barrens.

Gualtieri would be arrested in Youngstown, Ohio on a gun possession charge, and his reptuation and credibility eroded in Soprano's eyes. In jail, he communicated with Lupertazzi crime family underboss Johnny Sacrimoni to see if he could earn a position in his family, but he realized that he was duped by the Lupertazzis upon his release. His wavering loyalty led to him being marginalized within his family, but his murder of Minni Matrone led to Soprano regaining his trust in him. Gualtieri and Moltisanti made up after killing a waiter who complained about the tip that Moltisanti left him, and Soprano helped in securing Michele La Manna's return to prison to help Gualtieri's landscaping company, which was rivals with La Manna's.

Before 2007, Gualtieri was made underboss, and Moltisanti took over his old crew. Gualtieri took part in the heist of $1,000,000 in Colombian drug money with Cary De Bartolo, and he later became rivals with Vito Spatafore after Spatafore's homosexuality was revealed. Gualtieri's support for Spatafore being whacked, along with the animosity shown towards Spatafore by Lupertazzi acting boss Phil Leotardo, led to Soprano agreeing to let Spatafore be killed. Gualtieri's penny-pinching attitude earned him the scorn of other family members, especially Bobby Baccalieri, whose wife was injured on a ride after Gualtieri refused to pay for ride maintenance. Gualtieri soon became sick with prostate cancer, but he managed to beat the cancer after learning of Sacrimoni's death from lung cancer.

Soprano would later begin to consider Gualtieri for withholding information from him, notably the joke that Ralph Cifaretto made against Sacrimoni's wife, which almost led to Sacrimoni having Cifaretto killed; another factor was Gualtieri's concern about going out with Soprano on the same boat that was used for the murder of Bonpensiero. Later, Gualtieri became grief-stricken after Moltisanti died, realizing that he should have been nicer to him in life. In 2007, Gualtieri took over the old Aprile crew, although he had reservations about doing so due to its bad luck. He would attend the final sitdown with the Lupertazzi family, bringing their mob war to an end.